A Final Table at Full Tilt

Iak has been telling me for a while that it will come and it finally did. Also, I wan't to say thanks to 23skidoo and carmensincity for railbirding the end for me. It was a lot of fun and I don't think I could have played much better.

It was really an uneventful tourney. I put one beat on two guys when I was ahead preflop with kings and after the flop with trip kings. I got my chips in and the turn gave one guy a flush and the other guy a straight. The river paired the board and I'm on my way.

The bubble was tough as I got short stacked after being top 20 for a good part of the tourney. After the bubble broke I got aggressive and eentually got into a postion of 10 of 16 remaining. I ran into some bad luck when my A10 split the pot with A9 and later had my AK split vs AJ. Those chips would have put me into a much better position but I battled on.

As the final table bubble approached it became a tight game with most preflop raises being respected by all. This allowed me to move up some before we got to the final table.

Two players were knocked out on the first two hands and I'm sitting 5 of 7. It became a game a steals and I had to work to maintain my chip stack. Whith two big chip stacks and 5 medium stacks, the field changed postion many times until we got down 5 players. I made the possible mistake of not raising raising from the BB after UTG big stak called. The flop was 8h Ah 6d and I made a 2/3 pot bet. UTG pushed and I eventually folded. I still had position and the short stack so I felt this was the right move. I still had 3x the stack of the shorty. The next hand saw the shorty go all-in so I called from the SB and the BB checked. I hit a pair on the river to take the pot and move me up to fourth.

Just before the end I doubled up through the medium stack When my A7 suited hit a flush on the turn to get me back to even with the third place player. On my final hand I raised with A9 suited and got called by the chip leader. The flop comes 6s Kd 3s giving my the nut flush draw. I pushed in all my chips, about half the pot, and hoped for a fold or a spade. BB calls and shows AQ. My spade never comes and I'm out in 4th. I wondered about his call here but in retrospect I think it may be OK. He was trying to take me out and he did. The bigger pay day would have been nice.

I'l try to put up a trip report soon but I'm swamped so we'll see what happens.